"You can never be grateful for what the city has done to your children. You can never be grateful for the narcotics. You can remember, remember, remember your daughter with young breasts and clean legs and happy eyes until those… those bastardos, those chulos… took her from me. And now my son. Dead. Dead, dead, dead."
"Mrs. Hernandez," Carella said, wanting to reach out and touch her hand, "we…"
"Will it matter that we are Puerto Rican?" she asked suddenly. "Will you find who killed him anyway?"
"If someone killed him, we'll find him," Carella promised.
"Muchas gracias," Mrs. Hernandez said. "Thank you. I… I know what you must think. My children using drugs, my daughter a prostitute. But, believe me, we…"
"Your daughter…?"
"Si, si, to feed her habit." Her face suddenly crumpled. It had been fine a moment before, and then it suddenly crumpled, and she sucked in a deep breath, holding back the racking sob, and then she let it out, a sob ripped from her soul. The sob stabbed at Carella, and he could feel himself flinching, could feel his own face tightening in an impotency. Mrs. Hernandez seemed to be clinging to the edge of a steep cliff. She hung on desperately, and then sighed and looked again to the detectives.
"Perdóneme," she whispered. "Pardon me."
"Could we talk to your daughter?" Carella asked.
"For favor. Please. She may help you. You will find her at El Centro. Do you know the place?"
"Yes," Carella said.
"You will find her there. She… may help you. If she will talk to you."
"We'll try," Carella said. He rose. Kling rose simultaneously.
"Thank you very much, Mrs. Hernandez," Kling said.
"De nada," she answered. She turned her head towards the windows. "Look," she said. "It is almost morning. The sun is coming."
They left the apartment. Both men were silent on the way down to the street.
Carella had the feeling that the sun would never again shine on the mother of Aníbal Hernandez.
Chapter Four
The 87th Precinct was bounded on the north by the River Harb and the highway that followed its winding course. Striking south from there, and working block by block across the face of Isola, you first hit Silvermine Road and the fancy apartment buildings facing on the river and Silvermine Park. If you continued walking south, you crossed The Stem, and then Ainsley Avenue, and then Culver Avenue, and the short stretch of Mason known to the Puerto Ricans as La Vía de Putas.
El Centro, despite the occupation of Maria Hernandez, was not located on Whore Street. It crouched in a side street, one of the thirty-five running blocks that formed the east-to-west territory of the 87th. And though there were Italians and Jews and a large population of Irish people in the 87th, El Centro was in a street that was entirely Puerto Rican.
There were places in the city where you could get anything from a hunk of cocaine to a hunk of woman—anything in the alphabet, from C to S. El Centro was one of them.
The man who owned El Centro lived across the river in the next state. He very rarely visited his establishment. He left it in the capable managerial hands of Terry Donohue, a big Irishman with big fists. Donohue was, for a precinct Irishman, most unusuaclass="underline" he liked Puerto Ricans. This is not to say that he liked only Puerto Rican women. That was certainly true. But there were many "Americans" in the 87th Precinct who detested the influx of the "foreigners" while secretly admiring the tight wiggle of a foreign female's backside. Terry liked them both male and female. He also liked running El Centro. He had worked in dives all over the world, and he was fond of saying El Centro was the worst, but he still like it.
In fact, Terry Donohue liked just about everything. And considering the joint he ran, it was surprising that he could find anything to like in a cop—but he liked Steve Carella, and he greeted him warmly when the detective showed up later that day.
"You lop-eared wop!" he shouted. "I hear you got married!"
"I did," Carella said, grinning foolishly.
"The poor girl must be nuts," Terry said, shaking his massive head. "I'll send her a basket of condolences."
"The poor girl is in her right mind," Carella replied. "She picked the best available man in the city."
"Hoo! Listen to him!" Terry shouted. "What's her name, lad?"
"Teddy."
"Terry?" Terry asked unbelievingly. "Terry, is it?"
"Teddy. For Theodora."
"And Theodora what, may it be?"
"Franklin, it used to be."
Terry cocked his head to one side. "An Irish lass, perhaps?"
"Catch me marrying an Irish girl," Carella said, grinning.
"A mountain guinea like you could do worse than a sweet Irish lass," Terry said.
"She's Scotch," Carella told him.
"Good, good!" Terry bellowed. "I'm four-fifths Irish myself, with a fifth of Scotch thrown in."
"Ouch!" Carella said.
Terry scratched his head. "I usually get a laugh from the cops on that one. What're you drinking, Steve?"
"Nothing. I'm here on business."
"And business was never harmed, by God, by a tiny bit of alcohol."
"Have you seen Maria Hernandez around?"
"Now, Stevie," Terry said, "with a sweet little Scotch lass at home, why would you…"
"Business," Carella said.
"Good," Terry said. "A constant man in a city of inconsistencies."
"Inconstancies," Carella corrected.
"Whatever, she hasn't been in yet today. Is this about her brother?"
"Yes."
"A junkie, too, huh?"
"Yes."
"One thing gets me sore," Terry said, "is narcotics. Have you ever seen a pusher in here, Steve?"
"No," Carella said. "But I've seen plenty outside on the sidewalk."
"Sure, because the customer's always right, and he gets what he wants. But you never saw one of those scurvy bastards in my shop, and you never will, that's the truth."
"When do you expect her?"
"She doesn't roll around until about two. That's if she gets here at all. You know junkies, Steve. Figuring, figuring, always figuring. I swear to God, the president of General Motors doesn't have to do as much conniving as a junkie does."
Carella glanced at his watch. It was 12:27.
"I'll be back later," he said. "I want to grab lunch."
"You're offending me," Terry said.
"Huh?"
"Can't you read the sign outside? Bar and Grill. Do you see the hot table back there? The best damn lunch in the city."
"Yeah?"
"Arroz con polio today. Specialty of the house. Got this beautiful little girl who cooks it up." Terry grinned. "She cooks by day and hooks by night—but the arroz con polio is out of this world, lad."
"How's the girl?"
Terry grinned more widely. "I couldn't say, having only sampled the dear thing's cooking."
"I've been poisoned in worse places," Carella said. "Let's have it."
Maria Hernandez did not walk into El Centro until three that afternoon. A John from downtown on a romance-seeking excursion would probably have passed her by as a sweet, innocent high-school senior. For whereas the common stereotype puts all prostitutes in tight silk dresses slit to the navel, such is not the case. As a general rule, most of the prostitutes in the 87th were better and more stylishly dressed than the honest women in the streets. They were well-groomed and very often polite and courteous, so much so that many of the little girls in the neighborhood looked up to the hookers as the cream of society. In much the same way as the pamphlets that go through the mails in a plain brown wrapper, you couldn't tell what these girls had under their covers unless you knew them.